( HS Anderson 059649 2023) Pivoting: Responding to the Mental Health Need of Youth of Color with Technology

Course overview

For youth of color, prolonged exposure to racial discrimination has resulted in debilitating psychological, behavioral, and health outcomes. To help children prepare for and present the deleterious consequences of discrimination, many parents of color provide The Talk, or communication about racialized experiences. And, while these racial socialization strategies correspond with several CBT strategies widely used by clinicians, there is a critical gap between what families do to mitigate discriminatory distress and what clinicians and providers offer youth. As such, developing and providing technology that more effectively utilizes racial socialization processes to help youth heal from the effects of past, current, and future racial trauma is important. Our startup, RACE Space Inc, has developed the Teens Navigating the Talk app to facilitate these skills in youth of color and this talk will explore theories and practices important in the development of our app which facilitates the healing processes for youth, clinicians, and researchers alike, especially in times of exceptional stress (e.g., racial uprisings of 202 and beyond).